


Sword and Fan and Feathered Jacket

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: Dí Rénjié | Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-13
Updated: 2011-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jing'er never really got the hang of politics, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sword and Fan and Feathered Jacket

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lihai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lihai/gifts).



> Thank you, TLvop, for your help!

Shang'guan Jing'er had been in service to the empress only a month when she caught Seneschal Wan embezzling. Some of the older women told her not to meddle. Wan had allies among the old guard. He had many friends. Who would believe her word against his? Jing'er listened, and gathered her evidence, and brought her story before the empress along with the official records and tallies, the discrepancies evident.

Empress Wu listened to her statements, then asked Seneschal Wan for his defense. After hearing his blustering, the empress dismissed him to be exiled from the palace, his rank stripped, his face tattooed, and his family dishonored.

Then she dismissed the court and stepped down from her throne to where Jing'er was kneeling. "What is your name, again?" she asked.

"Shang'guan Jing'er, your majesty."

"Look at me, Shang'guan Jing'er."

A thrill of something more delicate than fear danced along Jing'er's spine. "It is forbidden, your majesty."

She could hear the curve of a smile in the empress' words, the soft lilt of amusement. "I cannot have an assistant who will not look up," the empress said. "You will be forever walking into things."

Jing'er stared down at the cool tile floor in disbelief, then slowly raised her eyes to look at the empress. "Assistant, your majesty?"

The empress seemed to tower over her, to fill the room with power. Her coiled hair, set in an intricate golden crown, her ornate robes, rich blue and delicately embroidered gold, and her taloned hands radiated power. But in her eyes, and the amused pull of her lips, Jing'er saw something else.

Not a weakness. Another kind of power, one that she was falling prey to already.

"Anything you ask, your majesty," Jing'er said.

* * *

Jing'er learned many things her first month in the empress' service. Acupuncture, tea, food tasting, poisons. The sword and the whip. Dance. Politics.

Jing'er did not take well to dance. Lightness of foot, she had. Strength in her legs and arms but grace in her movements, she was capable of. But the music never moved through her as it ought to. Her instructors told her to dance with the music like a partner, but her body fought it like a foe.

The most important and dangerous thing she learned, though, was the empress. To respect and fear her. To know her moods and her desires. To love--

Jing'er never really got the hang of politics, either.

* * *

"I could kill him for you, your majesty," she offered of Di Renjie.

The empress had smiled at her and said, "You must learn to keep some of your enemies alive. You never know when they might come in useful."

Di understood politics. He knew just how far he could show contempt without crossing a line, and how advantages were played against each other. He knew not just why a man would pursue a strategy, but how the most likely plans went, and how quickly.

He tried Jing'er's _patience_. And the empress wouldn't let her kill him.

"Can I wound him a little?" she asked.

The empress patted her fondly on the hand. "I need both of your skills more than you need your revenge."

* * *

"Are you humming _Pozhenyuetu?_ " she asked him incredulously.

Di stopped, turned, and smiled at her. "It was playing in my mind."

Jing'er hated that song. She hated dancing, and she hated dance festivals, and right now she hated Di Renjie.

Di saw something in her eyes, if not her expression, and smiled. He held up his hands, then shook out his sleeves, lightly.

Jing'er narrowed her eyes.

Di hummed the next phrase of the music, delicately moving his wrists, his elbows.

"Are you making fun of me?" she snapped.

"Never," he said, and hummed another phrase, drawing his fingers along imaginary ripples in the air.

She wanted to hit him, suddenly, to make him stop. And when he kept humming she reached out to slap at his hand and he caught her fingers with his, and she seethed at how damnably fast he was.

"You know how to fight," he said, then hummed again, drawing her hand along with his. "You don't dance?"

"That's different," she said. She tugged. He held fast for a moment, then slid his hand around hers until their fingers were touching back to back, his knuckles a gentle pressure on her own.

Jing'er watched Di's eyes, not his fingers. He was still smiling as he started humming again, pressing against her hand this time.

 _Tui shou_ , then. Jing'er maintained the touch, shifting her weight and pushing upward. Di stepped into her movement, gently bringing her arm back around.

One quick pass, two slow, and Jing'er noticed he was still humming. Worse, he was moving in time with the music. Quick, slow, slow, quick, slow, slow...

Worse still, she was moving in time with him. He drew her hand alongside his, and circled her, and it was like she was actually sparring with the music, with his soft, wordless voice.

Jing'er didn't want his condescension. She snatched her hand away.

"So you don't enjoy dancing," he said.

"I prefer the sword," she replied.

Di only smiled at her. "Of course, dancing and swordfighting are two sides of the same coin."

"Of course," she said in rejoinder, "try to bring a sword to a dance or dance through a swordfight and someone will end up bleeding."

Di nodded as though she had said something very wise. "And in both cases, you'll feel as though you have badly overextended a metaphor."

* * *

"Everyone must be expendable if you are to succeed," the empress had told her, when Jing'er was trying and failing to understand how men in political circles moved. "But you must also be able to learn from everyone. Even the ones you discard. Even your enemies."

Jing'er had enemies--the empress' enemies, and her own. She dispatched them, silently and cleanly, the thrust of the sword and the whisper of magic.

The empress smiled when Jing'er left, sword in hand. Her smile was broader when Jing'er returned, and knelt at her feet.

* * *

"Do not love me too well," Di Renjie said to her in the hours after their investigating had drawn to an end, when the evening mist hung heavy on the hills and they returned to the inn where he made his rest. "Your empress will be jealous."

"I don't think that loving you, much less loving you _well_ , is going to be my problem," she told him. "And the empress knows it."

Di only bowed to her, mockingly. "Like the dances of swords and those of the rainbow skirt and feathered jacket, the dances of love and hate are intertwined."

Jing'er sniffed. "I'm hardly going to mistake one for the other."

"Oh, but it is very easy to." He smiled sharply, like a razor blade. "Only slip once, and very soon you have changed the pattern of steps. Like so." Di held out his hand, and reluctantly Jing'er lay her palm in his.

With a whirl of motion, in a moment Jing'er was pulled into an embrace. Nose-to-nose, Di laughed at her.

She pushed him and stepped back. "Well, then. How does one avoid slipping?"

Di held out his hands. "Practice," he said. "As in all things, practice."

Jing'er wound the cord of her whip through her hands and thought.

* * *

"I would dance if it pleases you, your majesty," she told the empress that evening, after all of her reports had been spoken, and many things planned.

The empress raised her head from where she had been resting it, wearily, against one fine-boned hand. "You have never enjoyed dancing, Jing'er."

"I felt it was time to learn, your majesty," she said.

The empress smiled, and lowered her hands to her lap. "I would be delighted to see you dance, Jing'er."

Jing'er bowed, and lay down her sword.

* * *

Jing'er still hated politics, and Di Renjie. But she could practice loyalty, and dance.

**Author's Note:**

> Pozhenyuetu - a song written by Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong, second emperor of the Tang Dynasty, which was staged for dance festivals during the Tang Dynasty.
> 
> Tui shou - "push hands", an exercise for learning how to direct and redirect your sparring partner's energy. Used in tai chi, among other martial arts practices.


End file.
